Recently, web pages and web logs have been provided with a bookmark function. See, for example, “del.icio.us social bookmarking” (http://del.icio.us/), “About extraction of tag candidates” (http://tdiary.ishinao.net/20051201.html#p02), and “About TagClick” (http://www.tagclick.net/overview/). Bookmarking is to preregister URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) of web pages which are frequently viewed, and display a list thereof in a selectable manner in response to a user request. When a user selects a desired URL from the list, this function can instantaneously display the associated web page without requiring the user's inputting the URL.
There is a case where when the number of registered URLs becomes enormously large, it is difficult to search the URLs for a URL of a desired web page. Conventionally, web pages are managed in association with their tag information. Tag information is a keyword or the like to be associated with a URL. A user classifies individual web pages based on the contents thereof, and registers the web pages in association with tag information indicating the contents. As tag information is designated at the time of searching for a web page, only those URLs which are associated with the tag information are displayed, thus making it easier to search for a desired URL.
When one forgets to add tag information or when there are too many URLs to be associated with a single piece of tag information, however, it is difficult to search for a desired URL even using tag information as exemplified in the following scenarios.
Forget to Add Tag Information:
1. A Portal tag is often associated with a bookmark relating to a Portal site. However, there may be a case where a user forgets to associate a bookmark with a Portal tag or a case where the user who is in a hurry temporarily puts a bookmark and associates the bookmark with tag information later.
2. The user wants to search for a URL should have been registered before (e.g., about XXX Portal V6 Information Center).
3. Even with a Portal tag designated, the user cannot search for the associated URL.
4. The user inevitably searches titles or abstract texts, which are additional information of a bookmark, with Portal used as a keyword.
5. The user found out a desired URL, but found no Portal tag associated therewith.
6. The user associated a Portal tag with the URL for next and later searching. Although there were other URLs with which the user also forgot to associate Portal tags, those URLs were not relevant to the current search and were thus left as they were.
7. Return to “2”.
Embedding of Important URL:
1. An Ajax tag is often associated with a URL of a web page relating to Ajax.
2. While there are many URLs associated with Ajax tags, some of the URLs may not be referred to so much. Even if an Ajax tag is designated, therefore, a desired URL is not necessarily displayed near the top, and may be displayed far back from the top, thus making it difficult to search for the URL.
3. To narrow URLs to be searched, the URLs are searched with an Ajax tag in combination with another tag information. To narrow URLs to a searchable level, it may be necessary to combine two or three pieces of tag information.
4. To efficiently make next and later searching, tag information “Important” indicating a frequently-used URL can be associated with the searched URLs. However, repeating the process increases the number of URLs having “Important” added thereto.
5. Designating an “Important” tag alone is insufficient to narrow URLs, which requires a combination with another tag information.
As apparent from the above, depending on how tag information is used, a desired URL may not appear in the search results, or too many URLs, if registered, may lead to a large amount of search results, thus disabling to search for a desired URL.